Commentary on Political Economy

Tuesday, 14 February 2012

Max Weber's Sociological Ontology of 'Ideal Type'

As the Weber-buch nears completion, here is another excerpt from it that we hope will concentrate the minds of our friends. Cheers!

The “ideal-type
constructions of political economy,” writes Weber, do not have pretensions to a
“general empirical validity” that is “problematic” because they cannot sustain
or provide the foundations for themselves: political economy, just like
politics, is “without foundation” and its axioms remain purely heuristic and
“silent” as to the “prescription” of the final goals or “ends” to be pursued
through their “means”. But this time Weber goes on to state (we translate from
above):

It is
only because and uniquely because the categories of means and ends condition – the moment that one begins
to utilize them – the rationalization of empirical reality, that it is possible
to construct them [!].

This is an
extraordinary statement which, if taken literally and at face value, seems to
confirm our central thesis in this Part: - namely, that “rationalization” has
nothing to do with the ec-sistence of an “objective rationality” that is “technically
correct” and that is determined autonomously by an independent “empirical
reality”; rather, it has everything to do with the strategic and practical
political “ordering” (not simply and solely the “inter-pretation”!) of a
“reality” that serves the political interests of those who “construct” these
“ideal types”, these “axiomatic disciplines” such as “political economy”! To be
sure, this “strategic” approach to the self-understanding of his craft had been
outlined quite explicitly by Weber as early as 1904 in what was then his
clearest and most comprehensive discussion of “objectivity” in social science. Here it is not the “truth” of the entire
analysis that is claimed or aimed at, and not even the “moving average” of the
“results” of the analysis, but rather – precisely! - its “strategic” efficacy – its Position.

The distinctive characteristic of a problem of social policy is indeed the fact that it cannot
be resolved merely on the basis of purely technical considerations which assume
already settled ends. Normative standards of value can and must be the objects of
dispute in a discussion of a problem of social policy because the problem lies
in the domain of general cultural values. And the conflict occurs not merely,
as we are too easily inclined to believe today, between "class
interests" but between general views on life and the universe as well.
This latter point, however, does not lessen the truth that the particular
ultimate value judgment which the individual espouses is decided among other
factors and certainly to a quite significant degree by the degree of affinity
between it and his class interests — accepting for the time being this only
superficially unambiguous term. One thing is certain under all circumstances,
namely, the more "general" the problem involved, i.e., in this case,
the broader its cultural significance, the less subject it is to a single
unambiguous answer on the basis of the data of empirical sciences and the
greater the role played by value-ideas (Wertideen) and the ultimate and highest
personal axioms of belief. It is simply naive to believe, although there are
many specialists who even now occasionally do, that it is possible to establish
and to demonstrate as scientifically valid "a principle" for
practical social science from which the norms for the solution of practical problems
can be unambiguously derived….[p.57]

The fate of an epoch which has eaten of the tree of
knowledge is that it must know that we cannot learn the meaning of the world from the results of its analysis, be it ever
so perfect; it must rather be in a position to create this meaning itself. It
must recognize that general views of life and the universe can never be the
products of increasing empirical knowledge, and that the highest ideals, which
move us most forcefully, are always formed only in the struggle with other
ideals which are just as sacred to others as ours are to us.

Only an optimistic syncretism, such as is, at times,
the product of evolutionary-historical relativism, can theoretically delude
itself about the profound seriousness of this situation or practically shirk
its consequences. It can, to be sure, be just as obligatory subjectively for
the practical politician, in the individual case, to mediate between
antagonistic points of view as to take sides with one of them. But this has
nothing whatsoever to do with scientific "objectivity." Scientifically the "middle course"
is not truer even by a hair's breadth, than the most extreme party ideals
of the right or left. (pp57-58)

Obvious
is the attempt “to recuperate” the validity
of bourgeois “science”, its “scientificity”, in terms of a “greater truth”
(meta-logical or dialectical or ontic) that abandons the notion of “totality”
and “system” – of universality - the better “to intervene” tactically to
safeguard the overriding politico-institutional asset of capitalism, of “class
interests” broadly understood. The “truth” ec-sists: it can refer to a “reality”, a “totality”, a “thing-iness”. The truth
must be “falsifiable”, however; it cannot “close” the “system”, it cannot
“circumscribe” or “en-compass” (um-greifen, Jaspers) the “totality of reality”
which is “irrational and incommunicable”; it can-not reconcile the ineluctable conflict of class interests.

In the method
of investigation, the guiding "point of view" is of great importance
for the construction of the
conceptual scheme which will be used in the investigation. In the mode of their
use, however, the investigator is
obviously bound by the norms of our thought just as much here as elsewhere. For
scientific truth is precisely what is valid
for all who seek the truth.

However, there emerges from this the meaninglessness of the idea which
prevails occasionally even among historians, namely, that the goal of the
cultural sciences, however far it may be from realization, is to construct a closed system of concepts, in which
reality is synthesized in some sort of permanently
and universally valid classification and from which it can again be
deduced. The stream of immeasurable events flows unendingly towards eternity. (p.84)

Two
fallacies in Weber’s reasoning here leap immediately to our attention and we
have sought to expose them in this Part: First, Weber attempts erroneously to
distinguish “scientific method”, which for him is “value-neutral”, from its
“focus”, which he thinks is “evaluative”. We have shown that this is an
erroneous distinction because the very “act” of “seeking the truth” – this very “will to truth” (Nietzsche) – is a political act. Second, Weber still
considers this “stream”, this “system” and its “totality” as real and the Ratio-Ordo as scientifically communicable (therefore
“true”, Jaspers) to that extent. Yet in actual fact, Weber here is openly
acknowledging the “instrumentality” of his “science”, its effectuality, because “in an age that has eaten of the tree of
knowledge” this “science” cannot become a “closed
system” and therefore will be able to tell “the political practitioner”
what he “can” do rather than what he “should” do, but still from the point of view of his “class interests”! To be
effective, to have Power, “science” must be “dynamic”, it must “move and
adapt”, “capture” reality “as it is now” (!) and dominate it, subjugate it,
command it, exploit it, put it to its use, its service. This is the “use value”
of “science” as an instrument that is
inseparable, indistinguishable from the “uses”
to which it is put! Just as the use value of living labour for the capitalist class is that it can be commanded so as to
pro-duce dead objectified labour for the “re-production” of living labour – but
only (!) “separated” (Trennung),
divided (Krisis) from the means of
production of those use values. The “measure” of this command is “money”,
because it indicates the “availability” of living labour for its exploitation
in the institutional shape of “the money-wage”.

(Note
in this regard the similar approach adopted by Langlois and Loasby to the
com-prehension of general equilibrium economic analysis in terms of “closed”
and of economic “development” or “growth” in terms of “open” systems – one that
clearly refers back to Heidegger’s and Jaspers’s phenomenology and one that was
applied by Schumpeter on the back of
Schelling. Lawson for his part, with his distinction between “knowledge”
[mathematical] and “ontic” [historical] being, reprises uncritically and
simplistically this schema.)

What,
then, is the “knowledge” that “this [capitalist] epoch” has acquired after it
has –with Nietzsche! - “eaten from the
tree of knowledge”? Precisely this: that “science” is not an “autonomous”,
“neutral”, “scientific” or “objective” activity (enterprise!) except in its
being a “tool” for the Macht of the capitalist
class, of the political leitender Geist
that can govern and direct its instrumental use! As we saw in Part One, Weber
does not turn to Schumpeter’s Unternehmergeist
despite the fact that he had studied the origins
of the capitalist entrepreneur well before Schumpeter published his Theorie! Instead, Weber’s great diptych
of 1918-19 will remain the lectures “Politik
als Beruf” and “Wissenschaft als
Beruf” as if to emphasise the direct instrumental sub-sumption by politics
of “science as activity”. The “aura” of Schumpeter’s entrepreneur remained that
of the “freedom” of Romanticism, of German Idealism, of “the beautiful souls”
that preceded Nietzsche’s De-struktion of
Western metaphysics. Weber’s leitender
Geist instead shares nothing of the “trans-scendence” of Schumpeterian
“creative destruction”: not “entrepreneurial Innovation” but a highly specific mediation of “class interests”,
of conflict over needs and wants is the “rational scientific task” of the new Politiker “in an epoch that has eaten
from the tree of knowledge”.

This
is the point at which Weber will turn to the Parlamentarisierung as a means of
governing and directing the “trans-crescence” of the society of capital amidst
“the struggle of conflicting values” that the rise of the industrial working
class has occasioned in the form of the Demokratisierung. The real
social “foundations” of this social reality will form the subject of the next
and final Part of this study. As we anticipated in Part Two, it is “the money
wage” that constitutes the standard of
value that allows the osmosis, the “exchange value” at the base of all
social relations in the society of capital. For Weber, instead, it is “the
nation state” – but only because he believes in that “free play of economic
forces” (the stahlhartes Gehause) and their “autonomous development”, in that
“system of needs and wants” that we have shown to be illusory but that Weber
believes to be “apparently self-evident things”.

The science of political
economy is a political science. It is a servant of politics, not the

day-to-day
politics of the persons and classes who happen to be ruling

at
any given time, but the enduring power-political interests of the

nation.
For us the nation stateis
not something vague which (as some

believe)
is elevated ever higher the more its nature is shrouded in

16 The
Nation State and Economic Policy

mystical
obscurity. Rather, it is the worldly organisation of the

nation’s
power. Inthis nation
state the ultimate criterion for economic

policy,
as for all others, is in our view ‘reasonof state'. By
this we do

not
mean, as some strange misunderstanding would have it, 'help

from
the state' rather than 'self-help’, state regulation of economic

life
rather than the free play of economic
forces. In using this slogan

of ‘reason
of state' we wish to present the demand that the economic

and
political power-interests of our nation and their bearer, the

German
nation-state, should have the final and decisive say in all

questions
of German economic policy, including the questions of

whether,
and how far, the state should intervene in economic life, or

of
whether and when itis
better for it to free the economic forces of

the
nation from their fetters and to tear down the barriers in the way

of
their autonomous development.

Was
there no need tor me to remind you of these apparently self-evident

things? Was it particularly
unnecessary for one of the younger

representatives
of economic science to do so? I think not, for our

generation
in particular seems frequently to lose sight of these very

simple
foundations of judgement more easily
than most. (CWP, p.17.)

Yet the question
that we posed above still remains, the one to which Keynes will seek to provide
a “scientific” answer, of how it is possible to ensure the expanded
reproduction of the society of capital on
its own terms, in a language that is specific to its schema, to its “ideal type”
– to its “Utopia”.